SPOT (Satellite Probatoire d'Observation de la Terre) is the French government sponsored civil Earth observation program, with support from Belgium and Sweden. A single SPOT satellite provides ... complete coverage of the Earth every 26 days. Image products from SPOT are handled by a commercial entity, SPOT-Image Corp.

Two HRVIR (High Resolution Visible - Infrared) pushbrrom imaging instruments are carried. HRVIR is derived from the HRV instruments on SPOT 1-3. This system will provide 10 m resolution in the panchromatic band and 20 m resolution in the multispectral bands. HRVIR includes a new medium IR channel to support vegetation analysis and harvest forecasting. The HRVIRs are steerable to within 27 deg off-nadir. Each HRVIR has a swath width of 60 km. The Vegetation Monitoring instrument has 1 km resolution in the same bands as the HRVIR. PASTEL optical link terminal supports laser crosslink experiments. DORIS (Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite) precision orbit determination system.